{"id":67555,"date":"2020-08-14T10:59:27","date_gmt":"2020-08-14T14:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=67555"},"modified":"2024-09-01T09:55:05","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T13:55:05","slug":"haggart-canadas-covid-alert-app-is-a-case-of-tech-driven-bad-policy-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2020\/08\/haggart-canadas-covid-alert-app-is-a-case-of-tech-driven-bad-policy-design\/","title":{"rendered":"HAGGART: Canada\u2019s COVID Alert app is a case of tech-driven bad policy design"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Blayne Haggart, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, had a piece recently published in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/canadas-covid-alert-app-is-a-case-of-tech-driven-bad-policy-design-144448?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%2014%202020&amp;utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%2014%202020+CID_9cac4100c83453dda940dbb9e09c6ad0&amp;utm_source=campaign_monitor_ca&amp;utm_term=Canadas%20COVID%20Alert%20app%20is%20a%20case%20of%20tech-driven%20bad%20policy%20design\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Conversation<\/a> <\/em>about the incomplete technological fix Canada\u2019s new COVID Alert app provides to a nation continuing to battle the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>He writes:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThe July 31 release of Canada\u2019s COVID Alert app was greeted with almost universal praise.\u00a0Privacy experts applauded\u00a0its strong privacy protections, echoing the\u00a0official app website\u2019s extensive detailing of how \u201cyour privacy is protected,\u201d including a link to an\u00a0entire other page\u00a0that explains \u201chow COVID Alert protects your privacy,\u201d which in turn links to\u00a0Health Canada\u2019s privacy assessment of the app.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0<\/em><em>The focus on privacy was so overwhelming that you could be forgiven for thinking the app\u2019s entire purpose was to protect people\u2019s privacy rather than to save lives.<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em><em>Despite this near-universal praise, when you focus on the actual purpose of the app, rather than on its elegant design, red flags start popping up everywhere.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The design and rollout of the app all suggest that considerations of the app\u2019s medical effectiveness have been secondary to its technical design.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Continue reading the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/canadas-covid-alert-app-is-a-case-of-tech-driven-bad-policy-design-144448?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%2014%202020&amp;utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%2014%202020+CID_9cac4100c83453dda940dbb9e09c6ad0&amp;utm_source=campaign_monitor_ca&amp;utm_term=Canadas%20COVID%20Alert%20app%20is%20a%20case%20of%20tech-driven%20bad%20policy%20design\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blayne Haggart, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, had a piece recently published in The Conversation about the incomplete technological fix Canada\u2019s new COVID Alert app provides to a nation continuing to battle the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45641,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,38],"tags":[3445,4104,522,42,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67555"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67560,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67555\/revisions\/67560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}